Misadventure in Mauritius

Sunday morning, we had again debated renting the car the prior evening for use during the day, but again, we never committed ourselves as to whether it seemed worthwhile. Our plan for Sunday morning was to attend church nearby. I had found a church on line, with a French name, but the website that directed me to it was in English. Rajen again was our chauffeur for the day.

Unfortunately, late the prior day, I began to come down with Kalyssa’s cold, and now it had me full force. I tossed down some Day Quil during our morning drug cocktail hour (we all are taking Malarone, to prevent Malaria, plus some of us have some misc. other prescriptions we’re taking) and hoped it would be a mild one.

On the map, it looked very easy to get to the church, however, as we drove in that direction, none of us were quite sure where it was. We found a church, that was closing up, and asked someone. He said their service just ended, and that there was another church down the road. We headed down that way, but couldn’t find it. Rajen pulled over and asked, in French, a woman on the side of the road dressed in her Sunday best, if she knew where it was. She responded and we had apparently passed the church. Now that we’d been in Mauritius a couple days, I was realizing that while most people on the island are fluent in English, French is definitely the default. Given the name of the church, Église Chrétienne de Petite Rivière Noire (note, the village its in is called Petite Rivière Noire, so that would be French regardless) I began to worry that the service may not be in English. Sure enough, as we walked in, now a couple minutes late, it appeared it was all in French. We grabbed what looked to be bulletins and headed to the balcony.

Once we got up there, we realized they weren’t the order of worship. I went backdown myself to find the actual bulletins. The church was very small, and the service was underway. The table that had a few items lying on it didn’t appear to have anything along the ways of bulletins, and I was standing in front of about 4 rows of people trying to worship. I tried to ask an older European couple that were seated there where I could find the bulletins. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French… they, likely assuming I did since I was at a French church service, and likely not speaking English tried to ask me what I needed. I pointed to their bulletin, and the table, and they seemed utterly confused. I was trying really hard not to cause a distraction (and failing fast) for the people around, but also getting frustrated that everyone seemed to have a bulletin and I couldn’t find them anywhere in a tiny chapel. Finally the elderly man seemed to scowl a bit at me, and thrust his bulletin at me. I then retreated upstairs. (For those not practicing Christian’s, I would say that the vast majority of time those attending church are usually much more friendly/helpful than this and would be more than willing to try and help someone out. There are still a few old curmudgeon’s around such as this gentleman who unfortunately provide an experience contrary to the mission.) When I showed the single bulletin to the rest of the girls, they gave me the “Are you nuts?” look, and provided the obvious bit of information: “Its all in French.” At that time, the church band started up, and I attempted to sing the song in French. I offered to share the bulletin with the 3 women on my left, but they all stared at me as if I had sprouted an ear on foorhead. Knowing the answer, I asked, “Do you want to leave?” And got a unanimous “Yes.”

The stairs from the balcony brought us down directly in front of the man whose bulletin I had taken, and the four of us marched past, as I avoided eye contact, being a bit embarrassed about the situation, but at the same time, feeling very guilty that I didn’t give him his bulletin back.

When we got to the car, Rajen had reclined his seat, expecting at least an hour or so to doze. He was surprised to see us, and we explained what happened. Natalie asked if there was anything else to do in this area, and he said very straightly: “No, not really. The beaches are all back in Flic en Flac, there is a very small museum that may be of interest, the Martello Tower, which is an old French watchtower with a cannon. I had very few Mauritian Rupees in my pocket and asked if there was a fee. He said yes, but a very low one. So we agreed to head there.

When we got there, the gate was closed, though the sign said they should have opened 45 minutes earlier, and there was someone inside. The woman asked for 5 minutes as they needed to do some cleanup. We obliged, walked down to the coast to look around and then returned.

The tour was brief (but cost all of $2.25 per person) but fairly interesting. The fort was built by the French army, but was never needed for anything more than training. It had 4 floors to it, and was perfectly round, with each floor about 25-30 feet in diameter. Interestingly the front wall, facing the ocean was 11 feet thick. The back wall was only 6 feet thick. Certainly this seems like it would be pretty impenetrable. On the roof was an absolutely massive cannon, with a track upon which it swiveled allowing 360 degrees of defense, and a range of 2 kilometers. I was most amazed by the weight this cannon must have, in addition to the stone floor on the roof, which was supported only by the outer walls, and a single inner post running through the middle of the structure.



View From Top of Tower



On the way back into town, we weren’t sure what we wanted to do. We figured we’d either spend the day at the beach, find a glass bottom boat and take a ride, or potentially rent the car and go explore the island. Rajen drove past a few places he knew that did glass bottom boat rides, however they were closed (as it was Sunday). He suggested we could walk the beach, and there will likely be some hawkers that will have rides they can arrange for us. This seemed a little untrustworthy, but he said most of them are honest operators (this seemed vaguely consistent with some stuff I had read in planning for the trip.) We were hungry for lunch (which is not included through the homestay) so we asked him to drop us off in this area and we’d grab lunch and walk back to the guest house when we figured out what we were doing.

Driving On the Opposite Side

After lunch, we had decided we would finally go ahead and rent the car, and try and explore the other side of the island. This was a bit of a big decision, as I had never driven in a country where traffic drives on the left. I also figured the car would likely be manual transmission, which my car at home is as well, so that is not an issue, but does add to the complexity of learning to drive in a mirror image of what I’m used to. Oh, and add to that, most major intersections are roundabouts. We went home and changed, and I picked up the car, and we were off. Since even before the trip, I had considered this an option while in Mauritius, I had spent some time in the front seat while being driven, and tried to envision myself driving. I went through the reactions and decisions in my head each time we hit an intersection, or needed to pass someone on a highway, to determine if I could do it. Right turns seemed the trickiest, and my biggest fear was simply a required quick decision due to some unexpected event. My instinct is to pull right, and I needed to continually remind myself, pull left, pull left, pull left.

Roundabout Ahead!

The first thing I noticed, is that I’m used to seeing the left hand side of the lane in front of me. Therfore, I continually drifted towards the shoulder, as my eyes wanted to see the lane marker to the left right along side of me. It was difficult for me to center the car in the lane, and get used to the new positioning. After a period of time, I noticed that I was getting light headed. I believe it was because I was concentrating so hard on the road, and what side I was on, that I had not been breathing right. This was probably made worse by the headcold I had and perhaps the DayQuil I had taken.

Natalie was attempting to navigate us with a map the restaurant/car rental gave us, but it only showed the major roads. Also, it very inconveniently used lines to point to key attractions that were the same color and style as roads. Therefore, it could be difficult to tell in some areas where there was supposed to be a road, and where there wasn’t.

As we exited Flic en Flac, we stopped to put some gas (or Petrol as they say over here) in the tank (as it started at one quarter full.) Exiting the gas station, we ended up going down a road that was not the one that we were used to from when Rajen had been driving us around. We realized this fairly quick, but new what general direction we were heading, and figured we could meander back to the road we were looking for. As I mentioned earlier, most streets don’t have street signs, and the road we were on was apparently not major enough to have signs at the intersections indicating what village was in each direction. It didn’t appear either, that most of the roads we were on were on Natalie’s map. My data package was not available in Mauritius on my iPhone, (unless I wanted to pay $20k/Mb which is an easy way to rack up a $3000 bill.) so we were on our own.



Typical Main Road Through Villages (in good traffic)

 We spent a good hour and a half wandering through villages, and finding more and more traffic, and more and more cramped roads. Giant busses filled these streets as well, and when two going opposite directions approached each other, in some places, they couldn’t pass each other without at least one going up on the sidewalk. On the occasion that there was a car parked on the side of the road it was that much worse. We would come to an intersection that seemed as if it would take us where we needed, and turn down it to find that in fact, it was an even smaller road, not a main road at all.

Finally, Natalie made us stop to ask for directions at a petrol station. The person working there didn’t have a map for us, but offered to right out directions. He spoke clear English, but had an extremely limited vocabulary. He wrote out a crude map, which ended up being very simple to follow, and I thanked him. He said he lived in the direction that we were aiming to go, and that if we could wait just a little bit of time, he would be leaving, and would be more than happy to lead us there. I thanked him but declined (as we wanted to get there and back before dinner was served at the guest house.



Mahebourg



Finally, with his direction, we found our way to the highway that leads from the western-central section of Mauritius to the Southeast where we were looking to head. 45 minutes later we arrived in the town of Mahebourg, found the coast and went for a walk. The winds were incredibly strong here, and the air was around 68 degrees, so it made for a very chilly walk. There was no beach here, but some harbors, and some islands off the coast, that made it a very picturesque walk. We stayed just long enough to buy some sea urchin necklaces from a hawker, and nosed around in the water, (where we did see some really cool fish that were somewhat similar to angel fish with some yellow markings on them. We then went back to the car, and continued another 5-10 kilometers down the coast to Blue Bay.

Looking For Shells in Blue Bay

Sunset at Blue Bay

When we got out of the car here, amazingly the wind was completely calm, and the air was warm. There was a small beach, and a small area of lava rock stretching out into the ocean. We walked out on this and the girls scouted for shells for awhile. After watching the sun begin to set, across the bay and behind Mauritius, we jumped in the car to head back before it got too dark.

The return trip was a little scarier as the roads are not very well lit, but we were able to make it all the way back to Flic en Flac without a wrong turn, or any other adverse incident.



Upon our return, I dropped the girls off at the guesthouse, and took the car to return it to the restaurant two blocks away. While I was waiting for one of the workers to check the car, I ended up talking to the bartender. He was a life-long Mauritian (though the only Caucasian one I met while there) probably in his late 20s/early 30s, he asked quite a bit about our trip, and the family and if we were enjoying Mauritius and when we were coming back. While talking to him, he informed me of the Italian earthquake that happened a week or two ago. It suddenly dawned on me, that whereas I’m typically a news junkie, constantly checking the headlines of many different news outlets (I like to remain balanced in routinely check Fox News, CNN, Huffington Post, and even MSNBC occasionally) several times a day, I hadn’t been doing any of this since we left. It sounds like it is quite a tragedy and made a note to find some of the details when I next had internet access.

Dinner at the Palagino House (Sandy and Rajen not Pictured Here)

Back at the guest house, it was a full crowd, as for the first time all of us, all of the French family, and both Rajen, as well as Sandy and their two children (Athena and Kingsley-who is an adult in his 20s) were there to dine together. Kingsley is an artist in the field of graphic design, and he and Alexandra talked quite a bit about painting, sketching and drawing. Jean-Yves and I talked a little bit about both of our misadventures for the day. Us meandering lost throughout the island, and his family ending up with a tour operator for an excursion to the outlying islands. The manager of the tour ended up getting completely wasted on rum on the trip, and almost left the entire group stranded on the island. This evening we had to head to our room early however, so as get all of our bags packed yet again, in preparation of the next leg of our trip. This one required a little big of planning as well, since we will be on Safari in our next country, and need to separate just the clothes needed for the Safari, as the rest will be kept in storage at the hotel. Both girls collapsed exhausted in bed, as Natalie and unpacked, and repacked all the suitcases for the next, and final, week of our adventure.